TOKYO.- The TOKYO ATLAS International Art Exhibition aims to create a platform where art fosters new ways of seeing, thinking, and interacting, grounded in Tokyo as a city shaped by intersecting international cultural currents. The waterfront area that serves as the venue quite literally represents a global city open to the sea, making it a setting that aligns closely with the exhibition’s intent.

A defining feature of this exhibition is its decision to place diverse art projects outside of dedicated art venues such as museums. Instead, they are deliberately situated within urban spaces where civic life unfolds, allowing the works to exist alongside the city’s everyday rhythms and sights.

The ATLAS in the title refers both to Atlas, the mythological figure who upholds the world, and to an atlas as a book of maps. As visitors move through the city and come across works installed in different locations, they experience a succession of discoveries, much like following a map of unfamiliar terrain. In doing so, they are also invited to look again at Tokyo itself, seeing the city from a renewed perspective.

One of the exhibition’s main venues, Daiba Park, is an artificial island built in the late Edo period (1603–1868) as a battery intended to repel ships demanding that Japan open its ports to trade, yet it ultimately marked the country’s opening to the world without a single shot being fired. Works set within this historic park, which marked the beginning of the modern era in Japan, are sure to produce an extraordinary landscape in which history meets forward-looking art face to face.

Another of the main venues, the Aomi Minami Port Park area, lies next to a container terminal and overlooks the Port of Tokyo, including the Tokyo International Cruise Terminal, offering a panorama of the city’s international maritime activity. Through a range of works and projects unfolding across outdoor and underground spaces, visitors are invited to reflect on the urban landscape, infrastructure, and locality from a perspective rooted in the site itself.

By taking existing urban spaces in new directions, the exhibition allows audiences to engage with the expansive imagination and varied perspectives of artists active on the international art scene, while also drawing attention to lesser-seen sides of Tokyo itself—what one might call its raw, untamed vitality.

The exhibition also includes a section dedicated to works by emerging artists supported by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. It is hoped that this initiative, staged in the midst of the urban environment, will foster curiosity about the future and trace the outlines of a new atlas for the future.

Executive Committee for the Tokyo International Festival of Arts and Culture, TOKYO ATLAS Artistic Directors MIKI Akiko and TATEHATA Akira.

Participating artists:

Miki Akiko Artistic Director’s Exhibition: Abraham Poincheval, Goat’s Eyes, Haroon Mirza, Takeoka Yuji, Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joon, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Ipeh Nur, Han Ishu, Muhannad Shono, Katie Paterson, Shinoda Taro, Julian Charriére

Tatehata Akira Artistic Director’s Exhibin: Kusama Yayoi, Ishige Kenta, Ikemura Leiko, Zhao Yao, Mizuki Rui, Sasaoka Yuriko, Mori Keita, Kimsooja